


One Hundred Ghosts

by ToreyTaylor



Category: Original Work
Genre: 100 Themes Challenge, Gen, Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Multi, Other, Paranormal, Scary, Supernatural Elements, themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToreyTaylor/pseuds/ToreyTaylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of 100 ghost stories. I love ghosts and all things paranormal so I thought I'd put my own twist on the 100 Themes Challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Well Done

**Well Done**

It had gotten dark very quickly, so dark that anyone could have mistaken it for night time. Only it wasn't night time, nor would it arrive for another seven hours, at least. The thunderclouds had rolled in so quickly, blotting out the summer sun in minutes, and were so dense that Rosie could hardly see her hand in front of her face.

She and her friend Jesse were hanging out the bedroom window, egging the storm on. A sprinkle of rain landed on their outstretched arms and with it came the blinding whiteness of the first lightning bolt and then the crackling sound of the thunderclap.

"It's three miles away!" exclaimed Rosie excitedly.

"How'd you know that?" questioned Jesse curiously.

"You count how many seconds there are between the lightning and the thunder. It was a three second gap so it's three miles away."

"Oh cool!"

The house Rosie lived in had a large garden which backed onto fields where cows grazed all day long. They were there now, all sitting down, their white patches looking alarmingly bright amidst their dark surroundings. A grove of trees obscured some of the field from their view, but the two girls knew that there were some more cows sat behind the trees. They could hear them.

Suddenly, a flash of bright light lit up the whole garden. It was so dazzling it was blinding. There was a sound not of thunder but of an explosion. It cracked and boomed and sent shockwaves through their bodies and within a second it was gone. Darkness returned once more and suddenly the cows were up and moving and making awful sounds like they were petrified of something. Smoke was rising above the trees and there was a putrid smell of something burning, but it wasn't a normal smoky smell. It smelled like meat was cooking, except that the meat had gone bad.

"You okay?" asked Rosie, her voice shaking.

"I…I think so," muttered Jesse. "That was lightning, wasn't it?"

"…Yeah," replied Rosie after a long pause. "So much for it being three miles away. It was more like three metres away."

"That smell is gross. It smells like gone-off meat! Oh my God. You don't think…"

"Oh God. The cows! We should go check up on them!"

Rosie's dad came charging up the stairs and entered her bedroom.

"You okay, girls?" he huffed. "Did you see that? It was just lightning. Came a bit close, that's all. Nothing to be scared of. Come away from the window, please. Shut it as well. You hear?"

"But Dad! We think it got one of the cows! Maybe more, too. We should go check on them."

"Don't be silly."

"We're serious! Can't you smell it?"

His face turned from blatant disbelief to uncertainty and he told the girls to wait in their room while he checked. They didn't want to at first but when he told them what sight might be lurking behind the trees they kindly obliged to stay put. They knew they weren't allowed to, but they peered outside anyway, though they kept the window shut tight.

Rosie's dad had his bright yellow rain coat on with the hood pulled tightly around his head. He disappeared into the field and came back about a minute later. Rosie saw that his face bore the look of disgust and disbelief. She had been right. A cow had been struck. When he came back up and told them, it really hit home. It wasn't just a suspicion anymore; it was actually true. She felt a knot in her stomach and it churned and squirmed. Jesse kept muttering things like 'Oh my God' and 'That poor cow'.

A week had passed. The sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but the back garden had grown eerily cold and she could sense something in the air. For a late June day, it was more like October. Something was so wrong about the atmosphere. She suddenly heard a noise that shouldn't have been there. It was the all too familiar moo of a cow, except the cows had moved to a fresh pasture. Rosie's heart plummeted when she recalled that sound, and suddenly it didn't really sound right at all. It sounded distressed, hurt. It reminded her of that storm, and that cow. She ran inside, unsure exactly what to think. Perhaps it was just her imagination.

She fell onto her bed and put her iPod on. The comforting sound of her favourite song washed over her, eradicating all thoughts of the incident with the cow. A smell wafted in through the window, and it immediately made her throw up a little inside her mouth. It was that nasty, putrid smell of burning flesh. She rushed towards the open window and shut it fast, then plugged her music back into her ears and shut her eyes.

She jumped out of her skin. She could still hear that awful sound, even with her earphones in. It grew louder and louder, and louder still. Then it waxed and waned, grew distorted, until it was almost alien-like. She jammed up the volume on her iPod and played a heavy metal track. It was her least favourite track and one she had been meaning to remove from her playlist for some time, but now it seemed like it was meant to be there, to drown out that awful sound. Except it never did. The sound grew even louder, until she ripped out her earphones and then everything was deathly quiet.

In fact, it was too quiet. It was pure silence, something that Rosie realised she hadn't heard before. Apparently it was impossible to hear pure silence, experts said. There was always some sort of background noise. There was nothing. Then that sound

exploded in her ears, louder than it had ever been. Now it sounded as if it was being broadcast to the entire neighbourhood through a megaphone. She screamed, but she couldn't hear herself scream.

The door burst open and her dad came charging through.

"What the hell is going on!" he yelled. "Rosie! Rosie! You okay?"

He knelt down, beside his daughter who was rocking back and forth frantically and muttering incoherent words. Dribble was sliding down her chin. She looked utterly demented. He went to put his arm around her but she lashed out, digging a long fingernail into his cheek. He recoiled in shock and in pain.

"Rosie…" he muttered. "What…is wrong with you?"

"Stay back! Stay back! Oww…! My ears! My ears. Oh God, help!"

He couldn't get near her. His only option was to call for a doctor. Rosie had been sent to extensive counselling sessions for the next year and a half, eventually landing herself in a hospital for the mentally ill. She kept mumbling about the ghost cow that had been killed by a lightning strike. No one knew if she was telling the truth or whether it was her illness, but the myriad of counsellors and psychiatrists she saw tended to believe the latter. Only Rosie knew what really happened yet the truth had no chance, nor desire, to surface, and both she and her secret would be forever locked in a world of darkness.

The End


	2. Virtual Voice

**Virtual Voice**

**dolphingurl97 has just logged on**

**Initiating personal conversation with dolphingurl97. Please wait. If message box does not open within 5 seconds please click here.**

Amy waited for what felt longer than five seconds. The message box opened slowly and painfully, but it was still up, and that was okay. Her computer had been going slow for a couple of days now. It was really quite annoying, gnawing away at her patience bit by bit.

**dolphingurl97:** hi hun u ok?

**twilightrulesxx0:** im gud thnx!!

**dolphingurl97:** gd gd. Wot u up 2?

**twilightrulesxx0:** nuffin much jus chillin u?

**dolphingurl97:** yeh same lol

They sat talking for hours, about all sorts of things, from silly, random things, to boys, to plans they had over the summer. She began to feel a slight chill so she told her best friend that she would 'brb' a term which she and her pals always used online, which meant that she would be right back, and went to shut the window. She furrowed her brow in confusion when she saw that it was shut tight. There was such a chill in the air that it felt like the window had been fully opened. When she sat back down and looked at the popup convo box, she mentally recoiled. Message upon message spanned its length, and she couldn't understand how anybody could type so many words in about ten seconds flat. What she read startled her even more.

**dolphingurl97:** She is not here anymore. She is gone. I am here now. I am in your computer. I am in your room. I am everywhere. You will never be alone. Your mother, your father, your big brother, even your little baby sister, I am with them too. You will one day all perish, just like I did. Just like I did!

**dolphingurl97:** Just like I did!

**dolphingurl97:** Just like I did!

**dolphingurl97:** Just like I did!

The messages repeated themselves over and over again, and so fast that when she tried to close the conversation the whole screen froze for seconds before being bombarded with more and more messages, faster and faster and faster as each second passed. The computer started to make a whirring, gargling sound, like it was a robot out of a sci-fi movie that had come to life and was about to wreak havoc on the company who created it before unleashing itself into the world. Without thinking, she hit the power button on the tower and the machine went off, but not before hissing and screeching and shaking so violently that anyone seeing it would think it would explode.

Everything was silent for a few seconds. All that Amy could hear was the rushing sound of the blood in her ears and her own rapid heartbeat. Then the phone rang and it was shriller than usual, though she guessed it was because her senses had been unwillingly heightened.

"H-hello?" she answered.

"It's me! You went offline suddenly, you ok hun?"

"I…think so? Not sure really."

"Something up?"

"Was it a prank? All those messages?"

"What are you talking about?"

She knew deep down that it wasn't her friend behind those messages, but believing that she could have pranked her was easier to digest than the thought of something more sinister behind it. No one could have typed messages that fast, unless it was a bot, and even she knew that bots were rarely that ferocious and, rarer still, didn't send messages that were laden with such deep and frightening things.

"Something really weird happened. Like, _really_ weird. You were, I mean, something was using your username to send nasty messages to me. Oh God this sounds so weird! But it's true. I just don't know what's going on."

"That…is…so…strange…"

"Beth? What…what's wrong with your voice?" Her own voice started to shake. What she was hearing was terrifying.

"What…dooo…you…meeaan…?"

"Beth! Stop it! You're freaking me out!"

Her best friend's voice had turned slow and deep, as if it had been recorded and then played back in slow motion. It got deeper and deeper until it was no longer audible and then another voice, not Beth's, exploded through her ears. It was sharp and shrill, tinted with hysteria, like a mad woman ranting about some divine God that was all in her head.

"Everyone is going to die!" it screamed. "And no one can stop the future from happening! I am in your telephone! I am in your room! I am everywhere! You will all die! Just like me! Just like me! JUST LIKE…"

She slammed the phone down before the thing could finish its sentence. The phone rang again and she let it ring. She covered her ears with her hands and when the phone stopped she sighed with relief. Her bedroom door swung open then and her brother came running in.

"I've just had the weirdest phone call," he said, panic rising in his voice.

"What's going on?" she asked, knowing deep down that he wouldn't know.

"I don't know but it's scary. Really scary."

Nothing usually scared her brother, but this brought tears to his eyes just by talking about it.

She, it, I don't know what the heck it is, was talking, no, shouting at me. Saying that we're all gonna die. What the heck! I'm gonna go tell mum. You coming?"

"You bet I am," she responded. "I'm really scared as well and I don't want to stay up here on my own. Is Caitlyn downstairs?"

"No. Mum put her to bed about an hour ago."

"We'll have to wake her. She's not safe. It told me that. Whatever it is, it said that not even she's safe."

They knocked on their baby sister's room and then entered. She wasn't really a baby. She was nearly five actually, but to them she would always be their baby sister. She was fast asleep. Her night light was flickering and then suddenly went out. A cold air swept into Caitlyn's room and Amy swung towards the light switch and turned it on.

"Caitlyn, wake up."

There was no response so Amy shook her.

"Wake up! We've got to go downstairs, now. Come on!"

The five-year-old stirred and then her eyes shot open; she started screaming when she looked at the night light. It had come back on, but the light it emitted was a nasty, grim red instead of a clear white, and Caitlyn wasn't screaming at the light, Amy soon realised, but of the massively distorted face of a middle-aged woman. The face had embedded itself into the very fabric of the night light. Amy and her brother grabbed Caitlyn by the arms and they all ran downstairs into the living room.

"Mum, Dad!" they shouted in unison. Their dad was asleep and snoring while their mum was half reading a book, half watching a television programme about some famous actress who had died decades ago. Their dad shot up, spluttering and muttering about being rudely awakened. He looked at the time.

"What are you doing with Caitlyn? She should be in bed. What on earth is wrong with you?"

"Dad, just listen for a second, okay?" Amy's brother pleaded.

Their dad grunted and then made a sarcastic little laugh.

"Excuses, excuses. Go on."

"We think there's a ghost. Like, a really evil one. She's this crazy-ass woman and she was even in Caitlyn's room. Seriously! Caitlyn, tell him!"

Instead of telling him, Caitlyn just cried. He snorted out a huge laugh but he soon extinguished it and bore a look of severe annoyance when he realised that she was.

"For God's sake, Alex! You're scaring her! I suppose you're going to say the same thing as your brother, aren't you?" he asked, shooting a glance towards Amy.

"Yeah," she replied. "Because it's true."

She surprised herself with how calm she sounded. Maybe it would be better if at least one of them was level-headed. Her mum finally looked up at her book, and seemed to be intrigued rather than sceptical.

"Go on then," she urged. Amy couldn't be entirely sure if she was just being humoured, but she went on anyway.

"The computer started acting funny. I was talking to Beth online and then the convo box went really funny. I got this nasty message saying we were all dead and stuff. Really, really crazy it was. Then it started typing 'just like me' over and over and over. It made the computer make this funny noise so I had to turn it off from the power button. Then the phone rang and it was Beth. It was her voice at first but then her voice went slow and deep and then I could hear a crazy woman's voice…"

"This is ludicrous!" her dad bellowed, getting off his seat. "It's crazy talk, that's what it is. Go to bed! Now! And make sure that Caitlyn is tucked in…properly…" He trailed off, his eyes pinned to the television screen. They all looked around. The woman they saw in Caitlyn's night light was now in the television screen. The screen itself was a nasty, blood red colour. Grey, thin hands slithered up the screen as the face contorted into a shapeless blob. It snapped back into place almost instantly but her eyes were misshapen and her nose had been caved in.

"Oh my dear God, it's true," their dad mumbled. Caitlyn started to scream hysterically. Her mum ran towards her, scooped her up and ran into the kitchen with her.

"Stay back," he said to Amy and Alex. He lurched towards the plug and pulled it out, but the screen was still red and the pulverised face of the ghost lady was still staring at them through the screen. Then she started screaming at them, with those same chilling words.

"Just like me! Just like me! Just like ME! JUST LIKE ME!"

Caitlyn was still screaming hysterically and then so did their mum. Amy ran into them, not even thinking about doing it. The kettle was boiling over, and blistering hot water was spilling onto the work surface and dripping down onto the floor. Then suddenly, it exploded with a bang, sending the water everywhere. They had all moved just in time.

"We need to get out of this house!" screamed Amy's mum. "Right now! We'll all be dead if we stay, I just know it! Amy, Alex, out the back, now. Dave! Dave, come on! We need to get out of here!"

He didn't come so Amy went into the living room to get him. He was sat near the television with his face in the palm of the ghost's hand. It had protruded out of the television screen. It was clawing away and he was just sat there, letting her do it. With all the courage she could muster, Amy charged over to her dad and pulled him away. The ghost screamed and her hand shot back into the television before it turned itself off.

"Dad," she sobbed. "Did she hurt you?"

"N-no," he replied, shaken but seemingly alright. "I'm…I'm okay. I promise. So sorry I shouted. I don't know…don't know what's going on."

"Neither do we, but we need to get out of here. We're going through the back gate, to Grandma's house."

They never found out who the woman was, and why she had decided to haunt them all through their own electrical appliances. An exorcism was conducted two days after the events took place, but the exorcism failed. They had no choice but to remove all the electrical appliances from the house. At first, they thought the ghost would return, but it became apparent that electricity was her source of power. Since then, Amy and her family have learned to live without electricity. For some, electricity is a blessing, but for others, it is truly a curse.

The end


End file.
